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Still Jumping Into the Job Pool

David Rock, 16, is working at Friendlys at Jones Beach. Credit
Susan Farley for The New York Times

WHEN Cate Fahey applied for a summer job at the J. Crew store at The Westchester mall in April, she must have made a good impression. At age 19, she is outgoing, poised and hard-working.

She landed the job and is now in the unusual position of holding not just one summer job, but two, at a time when fewer teenagers are working. From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. she works as a counselor at the Larchmont Yacht Club’s summer camp. Then, two or three days a week, after rushing to her home in Mamaroneck to shower and change, she drives to her J. Crew job in White Plains to work from 5 to 11 p.m. She helps shoppers find the sizes and styles they want and folds hundreds of slacks and blouses each day.

“I really love working,” said Ms. Fahey, a sophomore at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., with a double major in government and history. “My parents didn’t want me sitting around all summer.” If she had sat around, she added, “I would be very bored and probably weigh quite a bit more.”

By holding even one job, Ms. Fahey is bucking the tide, because less than half of the nation’s teenagers aged 16 to 19 are working this summer. Indeed, the percentage holding summer jobs, 42 percent, slid to its lowest level since World War II. Fifty-three percent of teenagers were working in 2000; a decade earlier, 60 percent were, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Economists and sociologists see many explanations for this decline. Immigrants are taking many jobs, like mowing lawns or making beds at summer resorts, once held by teenagers. More Americans over age 60 are staying in the work force in part-time jobs, like a retail clerk, that often go to teenagers. The nation has lost three million manufacturing jobs since 2000, leaving fewer factory jobs for teenagers. The federal government’s summer jobs program, which aims to give work experience to low-income teenagers, is a fraction of what it once was, employing fewer than 100,000 teenagers, down from 1.5 million three decades ago.

The percentage of teenagers working has also declined because many students are taking their academic work more seriously, often taking summer courses, whether at a local community college or at Oxford. “Teens are paying more attention to school,” said Teresa L. Morisi, an economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “There is more pressure to do well in school.”

While many teenagers are happy to hang out at the mall or laze about at the beach, many others are intent on working.

“I decided to work because I want money to buy things,” said David Rock, a 16-year-old from Freeport who has his eye on more DVD’s and clothes. He works full time, selling ice cream at the front counter of the Friendly’s restaurant at the Jones Beach central mall. David said it was his idea to work, although he said his parents praised him for showing maturity.

Betsy Mercado, 16, a junior at W. T. Clarke High School in Westbury, serves ice cream alongside him, but is working for a different reason. “I felt I should help my parents,” she said. Ms. Mercado, who has three younger sisters, says she gives half her paycheck to her parents.

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Cate Fahey, 19, took a job, her second, at J. Crew at The Westchester Mall. Credit
Susan Farley for The New York Times

Betsy, slim and wearing silver, heart-shaped earrings, was a little envious of teenagers who spend day after day hanging out at the beach. “There are times when I feel a little jealous of those who don’t have to work, who don’t lift a finger because Mom and Dad provide,” she said.

Grovert Fuentes, 18, who graduated from North Bergen High School in New Jersey in June, said he was working for reasons beyond having some cash in his pocket.

“You work to gain knowledge, responsibility,” he said. “You’re going to meet people every day and you have to be on a schedule every day for the rest of your life.” He averages 30 hours a week as a barista at a Starbucks in Edgewater, N.J., and works 35 hours at the Pathmark there.

Mr. Fuentes said, “I choose to do this second job for extra money,” money that will help pay for college. He plans to enroll at Bergen Community College this fall.

Standing outside the J. Crew store where Ms. Fahey works, Vincent and Phillip De Santis, 16-year-old twins from Irvington, N.Y., said they were not working this summer because they took a nine-day Caribbean cruise with their family and were concentrating on their summer lacrosse league. Vincent said he hoped to work this fall “to have my own money,” saying his parents did not give him a big allowance.

Sharon Seymour, 16, from Somers, N.Y., who had just come from the Victoria’s Secret at The Westchester mall with a friend, said she felt too young for a job. Sharon, who spends many summer days at Jones Beach, said: “I’d rather not be working. It’s not my job yet.”

But many teenagers do not have summer jobs even though they would like to work.

In Newark, Mayor Cory A. Booker was overwhelmed by the eagerness to work that some teenagers have shown. Newark had initially set aside money for 1,200 part-time summer jobs paying $7.15 an hour. But more than 2,000 teenagers applied, so Mr. Booker expanded the program to accommodate 2,000 teenagers at 475 sites, working as lifeguards, park attendants, receptionists and in other jobs.

This July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 25 percent of African-American teenagers aged 16 to 19, have jobs, compared with 31 percent of Hispanic teenagers and 60 percent of white teenagers.

Andrew M. Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, said it was unfortunate that fewer teenagers, especially those from low-income households, were working.

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Pushing carts as part of his job at Pathmark in Edgewater is Sanders Mitchell, 18.Credit
Susan Farley for The New York Times

“The question is, ‘How do you learn how to work?’ ” Professor Sum asked. “The way you learn how to work is by working. The longer we delay having kids work, the more they pick up habits in the street. Low-income kids who are least likely to work are more likely to pick up their habits in the street, like how to dress, how to talk, how to get along with people. It’s a bad situation when kids fail to get work early on.”

In a report released in April, the center found that 54 percent of teenagers from families with incomes above $75,000 work, compared with 43 percent from families with incomes of $20,000 to $40,000. In families with incomes below $20,000, 33 percent of teenagers work.

Professor Sum said it was not surprising that a higher percentage of teenagers from higher-income families work. “Their parents often know someone,” he said. “They have connections. And when both parents work, they often tell their kids it’s important to work, to finance part of your own education and to learn good work habits.”

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Each year college admissions offices consider applicants who held summer jobs or did volunteer work in Costa Rica and other countries. Gregory A. Pyke, senior associate dean of admission at Wesleyan University, said: “When I read applications, I look for evidence that a student has demonstrated real responsibility. A paid job can be evidence of that, and volunteer work can be similar evidence of that, and some extracurricular positions would have that same responsibility.”

Mr. Pyke has advice for students who want to help with poverty, homelessness and other social problems that exist abroad as well as “within 25 miles of where most of our students live.”

“I like to see students demonstrate that type of responsibility in their own backyard,” he said. “Whether it’s through paid employment or through similar hours of volunteer work matters less.”

Gary L. Ross, the dean of admission at Colgate University, said, “If students are in a position where they do not need to help support their families financially, then I hope they will follow their passion and not think so such about what is going to impress a college admission committee.” Within that set of passions, he said, it would be good if students could take a job to appreciate the responsibilities of working. “And I’m not talking about cleaning your mom’s law office,” he said.

“We want 14-, 15-, 16-, 17-year-olds to understand that when they’re scooping ice cream or flipping hamburgers at McDonald’s,” he said, “we consider it very valuable to be helping their mother or father or both parents feed their 6- and 7-year-old brothers and sisters.”

Some teenagers are eager to find jobs that will help their career, while some look for jobs that are fun or fit with their social schedule.

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Roland G. Fuoco, 18, took a job as a janitor at the First Presbyterian Church of Fairfield.Credit
Thomas McDonald for The New York Times

Ken Parker, a 19-year-old from East Islip who is a sophomore at Northeastern University, is working for $10 an hour at a money management firm, Bellator Capital Partners. His father is friendly with someone who works there. “I am studying finance so it’s good to become acquainted with the vocabulary, the daily routine and the environment,” he said.

McLean Crichton, a 19-year-old from Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., who is a sophomore at Emory University, is an SAT instructor with the Princeton Review. He works three to seven hours a day, earning $10 an hour when he proctors tests and $19 an hour when he teaches small groups.

“My math has gotten exponentially better,” he said. His work schedule is much better than those of his friends, he said. “I see my friends working at Goldman Sachs, going into the city at 6 a.m. and coming home at 6, and they’re too tired to do anything with me at night. For now, three to seven hours of work is enough.”

Roland G. Fuoco, 18, from New Canaan, Conn., sounded upbeat about his job as a janitor at the First Presbyterian Church of Fairfield.

“It has taught me that when you work at a job it’s really what you make of it,” said Mr. Fuoco, a sophomore at New York University. “There are fun things you can do to entertain yourself. I have my iPod. I listen to music. I play a lot of air guitar on the brooms and the mops. I can make my own hours, so I can still see my friends.

“Any money I have,” he continued, “I’m saving so I can eat at school and pay for books. Halfway through the semester, I don’t want to be begging at my parents’ doorstep for money.”

Octavia Willis, an 18-year-old graduate of New Rochelle High School in Westchester who occasionally works as a model, took a summer job at Abercrombie & Fitch at The Westchester mall after a manager approached her when she was shopping there and asked if she wanted a job.

Ms. Willis, who plans to enter the State University at Binghamton in September, said she liked the Abercrombie & Fitch job because she meets different kinds of people. And her manager, Lindsey Donnelly, said she was eager to hire teenagers because “that’s the group we’re selling to.”

Karina Casella, the manager of the J. Crew store where Ms. Fahey works, said teenagers represented about 30 percent of her store’s 70 employees this summer. “We have a good mix of teens and an older crowd,” she said

Ms. Fahey said she was saving money for a three-week study trip this winter, probably to Ireland. She expressed no resentment toward students who don’t work and whose parents pay for their clothes and movie tickets.

“I think that if your parents are willing to do that for you, that’s great, but how is that going to help you get a job?” she asked. “I think you learn everything about work from having jobs.”

Kristin Hussey contributed reporting from Connecticut, Susan Saiter from Long Island, Nate Schweber from New Jersey and Susan Stewart from Westchester County.